John Spencer Camp was born January 30, 1858, in Middletown, Connecticut.1 He played a prominent role in the musical life of Hartford, Connecticut as organist at Park Congregational Church (1881–1906) and the Center Church (1906–1918) and conductor of the Hartford Philharmonic Orchestra (1902–1911).2 He was a founder of the American Guild of Organists and served on its National Council as auditor from 1896 to 1901.3 In 1899 he was one of the first persons to buy stock in the Austin Organ Company.4 On August 30, 1901, he was elected as a board member and treasurer; he resigned from the latter position in January 1902. He later served as vice president (1905–1912) and as treasurer from 1912 until he resigned from that position, effective January 1, 1930. He remained on the board until the Austin Organ Company was liquidated in 1937.5 John Spencer Camp died on February 1, 1946, in Hartford; his grave is in Indian Hill Cemetery, Middletown, Connecticut.6

Sources:

Waldo Seldon Pratt, ed., Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, American Supplement: Being the Sixth Volume of the Complete Work (New York: Macmillan, 1920), 151, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/grovesdictionary00grovrich.

Pratt, Grove’s Dictionary, 151, gives the dates 1882–1906 for Camp’s tenure at Park Congregational Church and the name First (Congregational) Church instead of the Center Church. The Austin Organ Company’s opus 42 (OHS Database ID 12803) was installed in Park Congregational Church in 1899; Austin’s opus 189 (OHS Database ID 12802) was installed at the Center Church in 1907 (in the OHS Database, the church’s name is First Church of Christ; in Ochse, Austin Organs, 554, it is First Church of Christ (Center Cong.). On Camp’s tenure as conductor of the Hartford Philharmonic, see Frances Hall Johnson, Musical Memories of Hartford: Drawn from Records Public and Private (Hartford, Conn.: Witkower’s, 1931), 123–40, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/musicalmemorieso00john#page/n5/mode/2up/search/park. According to Johnson, Camp resigned as conductor because of a severe nervous breakdown.

Ochse, Austin Organs, 51.

Ibid., 265.

Ibid., 51, 68n, 265 (on this page his tenure as vice president is dated 1905–13, and he is said to have been “permanent treasurer from 1911 on”).

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